The Met, the ‘Ring’ and the Rage Against the Machine

Bryn Terfel and Deborah Voigt in the Metropolitan Opera’s 2011 production of “Die Walküre,” on the machine, the 45-ton set of movable planks.Credit
Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

Peter Gelb has both raised expectations and invited criticism by calling Robert Lepage’s $16 million production of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle for the Metropolitan Opera revolutionary. He used the word again in a recent interview at his office, as he spoke of the “trials and tribulations” of executing Mr. Lepage’s “superhuman,” technically daunting concept in a repertory theater “against amazing odds.”

This backstage drama should not matter to the public, he added. But Mr. Gelb, the Met’s general manager since 2006, has been living it, attending every stage rehearsal and “complaining bitterly,” he said, about the persistent clankiness of the so-called machine, the 45-ton set of movable planks that dominate the production.

Now the real test has arrived. On Saturday night the Met begins the first of three complete “Ring” cycles. On Wednesday night there will be a preliminary presentation of “Das Rheingold,” the first of the cycle’s four component operas. But it is the glitch-prone machine that probably needs this warm-up “Rheingold” more than the cast and the orchestra.

Despite the technical problems and the stinging barbs the production has received from many critics, Mr. Gelb sees the Lepage “Ring” as emblematic of his mission to bring the latest theatrical thinking and technology to the Met.

“Over all for me, on balance, I think it’s a remarkable experience,” he said. Yet even he is a little worried: “I reserve final assessment until I see how it all works out technically, when presented complete in the space of a week.”

It was at Mr. Gelb’s invitation that I met him last month for an interview. In part he wanted to expound on his vision and offer a “bird’s-eye view of what we have planned for future seasons,” he said. Some of those plans look exciting, like a new production of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” scheduled for the fall of 2016, directed by Willy Decker, starring the soprano Nina Stemme and the tenor Gary Lehman, and conducted by Simon Rattle, who had a triumphant Met debut in Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande” last season.

During the interview Mr. Gelb also rebutted backlash over some of the productions on his watch. Shortly before, Alex Ross had written of the “Ring” in The New Yorker: “Pound for pound, ton for ton, it is the most witless and wasteful production in modern operatic history.”

Photo

Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager.Credit
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

In principle it is hard to argue with what Mr. Gelb espouses. He believes in “taking risks,” he emphasized. And he said that with an average of seven new productions a season during his tenure, there is more happening than in “any period since World War II.”

More output does not mean that everything has been good, he acknowledged. But “it is absolutely essential,” he added, “to take pieces that are clearly dated, in terms of their production, and attempt to give them new life.”

Defining “dated” is the question. For all the talk of theatrical innovation, many productions during the Gelb years have been found wanting, not because they are outrageously modern but because they are essentially traditional takes spiffed up with contemporary trappings: the surprisingly timid and unfocused production of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” this season, for example, by the hot British director Michael Grandage, in his company debut.

Mr. Gelb has recruited several acclaimed directors who have mostly worked outside the realm of opera. And some of the results, he admitted, did not turn out as he had hoped: among them, John Doyle’s cluttered staging of Britten’s “Peter Grimes” in 2008.

But other such risks have paid off, he said. Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch were both new to opera when, with the English National Opera, they created a transfixing production of Philip Glass’s “Satyagraha,” which was an audience favorite at its Met premiere in 2008 and equally successful on its return last fall.

The new “Ring” is both a point of pride and a sore point for Mr. Gelb. When pressed, he said that “revolutionary” was perhaps “not the right word” to describe it. For all its movable parts and often captivating videos, the production takes a straightforward, almost literal-minded approach to telling the story.

What is revolutionary about it, Mr. Gelb insisted, is that “Robert Lepage may be the first director to execute what Wagner actually wanted to see onstage.” Wagner’s libretto is filled with stage directions that were unrealistic for his day, including underwater episodes with the Rhinemaidens swirling about. But why do a bunch of undulating planks and female singers dangling from wires represent a closer execution of Wagner’s theatrical vision for this scene than more daring, playful or metaphorical realizations?

Photo

Bryn Terfel as Wotan in “Das Rheingold”: on Wednesday the Met will warm up with a single performance of it.Credit
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

The Lepage “Ring,” Mr. Gelb asserted, is more popular than its critics allow, in part because of “this incredible feat that Robert pulled off, of offering a way to create a new character, which was the scenery.”

He could be right. But for many people, making the set a character is the problem. The machine imposes itself and distracts us from Wagner’s music drama.

By Mr. Gelb’s calculation, when his first decade as general manager ends in 2016 (“provided I’m not fired before then,” he added in what he later said was just gallows humor), the company will have presented 62 new productions and introduced 17 works to its repertory. This compares with 45 new productions and 12 Met premieres in the previous decade. Along with the increased productivity, clearly “a good thing,” he said, come “increased chances of success and disappointments.”

Mr. Gelb came across as fully in charge and confident in his priorities. To the suggestion I made in a column last year that the Met should appoint a director of productions, Mr. Gelb said: “I’m the director of productions. I hope you’ll accept that.”

Some of his plans look enticing. The director Deborah Warner will stage Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” with Mariusz Kwiecien in the title role, Anna Netrebko as Tatiana and Valery Gergiev conducting, to open the season in 2013.

Also that season, the Russian director Dmitri Tcherniakov will direct Borodin’s “Prince Igor,” working with the choreographer Alexei Ratmansky and the conductor Valery Gergiev. In 2015-16 Mr. Kentridge is scheduled for Berg’s “Lulu,” a production inspired by German Expressionist woodblock prints and starring the soprano Marlis Petersen.

Other projects involve the director and choreographer Susan Stroman, best known for “The Producers” on Broadway, who will take on Lehar’s “Merry Widow,” starring Renée Fleming. And it appears that Messiaen’s formidable masterpiece “St. François d’Assise” will finally have a New York production in 2017, with Mr. Lepage directing and Eric Owens in the title role.

Mr. Lepage will continue as a major player at the house. Next season he directs Thomas Adès’s exhilarating 2004 opera, “The Tempest.” Mr. Gelb spoke enthusiastically of Mr. Lepage’s concept: Prospero, the usurped Duke of Milan, creates a “sort of magical box where he could do his magical tricks.” The box will evoke the Teatro Alla Scala in Milan, seen from different perspectives.

So the next Lepage production at the Met will feature a box instead of a machine. “We’re workshopping it now, and I think it’s good,” Mr. Gelb said. “But you never know.”

A version of this article appears in print on April 4, 2012, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Met, the ‘Ring’ and the Rage Against the Machine. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe